Philosophically speaking
It was pitch black outside the window. Dad, mom and I were back from a freezing cold scroll around DUMBO. We were happily cramped in my miniature New York studio: we hadn’t seen each other in almost four months.
Dad, mom and I are a little family of three, and when we are preparing dinner is when we get to talk about deep stuff. Everyone does their own thing: sets up the table, cooks, is the cooking assistant, cleans up the space, chooses a movie.. Maybe the topic of that winter night was the beginning of humankind, exploring the outer space, how technology controls us, which form of government would work best, how humanity could survive climate change, where does evil come from…
“Well... philosophically speaking...," dad articulates in a serious tone as he organizes the groceries in the kitchen shelves. "My butt crack was showing,” he casts in a bizarre and unexpected calm.
I stop stirring the chopped purple onions and red peppers on the pan and turned around to look at him. Mom, googling on her phone while sitting on the most uncomfortable narrow red synthetic leather sofa bed that has ever existed, drops her jaw and opens her green eyes wide.
“What??!!” we both exclaim staring at him and depicting a confused face worthy of a meme. His words were far from matching our talk.
Like someone had just screamed “FREEZE!,” dad starts to slowly rise from the ground, as a toddler caught red-handed stealing chocolates from the cookie jar, hunching over his back, like an armadillo rolling, one hand lifting the back of his camouflaged cargo shorts, the other one holding his glasses.
He hates those glasses; he can’t see shit from far or close, so the female employee at the optical shop next to the Supreme Court of Justice in Buenos Aires made him buy a blue pair with yellow and purple flowers on its legs. He got upset for like two minutes when he arrived home in Buenos Aires that night and I told him: “Dude, you have lilies on your glasses,” and then he was over it. He hates them, but he takes them everywhere and uses them 24/7. My dad is one of those baby boomer Argentine men that was raised to eat the whole plate, never leave a crumb behind, and never throw scraps to the trash, so buying a new pair of glasses just because his are “girly”, well, “fuck it.”
“You didn’t get to see anything, right?”, he asks ashamed but playful.
Mom is choked on her laugh, so I reply for both.
“Dad, we have no idea of what you were doing, and no, we luckily didn’t see your butt crack.”
He is finally straight on his feet and his cargo shorts well tight below his brown leather belt, the same one he has since 2003. “Thank God, because I dropped my glasses so I crouched, and my shorts basically fell off.”
Those glasses are not a typical 58-year-old male lawyer, but damn they last.
“Glad they didn’t break, or you would have lost your lilies.”
“Glad you didn’t see my butt crack.”